Integrated treatment for oil free petroleum produced water using novel resin composite followed by microfiltration

Gamma irradiation poses a potential role in the new porous resin composite preparation. A mixing of phenyl epoxy /poly (vinyl pyrrolidone) / Fe3O4 at a ratio of 90:8:2%, respectively, with a trace of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) for the composite reinforcement was proposed in this study. Foaming the homogenous mixture before irradiation was conducted for the purpose of up-grading the resin efficiency in this application. It was found that 60 kGy is the optimum irradiation dose for preparing the resin composite in terms of the accepted physical properties. The attained resin composite was chemically and physically characterized using Fourier transformer infra-red spectroscopy and hardness measurements. Meanwhile, their properties thermally and morphologically were investigated using thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively. Other properties were also determined, including water uptake, capacity ion exchange, proton conductivity, and porosity. The prepared resin composite was successfully used in SPE for treatment of petroleum produced water (PPW), when 10 g of this resin was used the oil content decreased from 148.54 to 1.13 g/l. The optimum treated effluent was subjected further to microfiltration to reach oil free PPW. The obtained final treated effluent of microfiltration was completely oil free which can be safely reused as injected water to save a great amount of water in the petroleum industries, while protecting the environment and enhancing the oil recovery.